There has been known a rotary compression-molding machine including a die table of a turret having die bores, an upper punch and a lower punch slidably retained above and below each of the die bores, and configured to horizontally rotate the die table and the punches together to compression mold (or make a tablet) a powdery material filled in the die bores when the paired upper and lower punches pass between an upper roll and a lower roll. The molding machine of this type is applied, for example, to produce pharmaceutical tablets, food products, electronic components, and the like.
Each molded product is subjected to various post processes. Examples of the post processes include inspecting the molded product as to whether or not the molded product has a defective exterior, removing dust adhering to the molded product, inspecting the molded product in terms of volume, weight, or components, inspecting as to whether or not the molded product contains any alien metal, printing or engraving on the exterior of the molded product, and wrapping the molded product. As disclosed in JP 2017-164786 A, there has recently been an attempt to continuously execute from molding a product to applying a post process by connecting the compression-molding machine with a downstream device or equipment configured to execute the post process.
The lower punches push upward products molded in the die bores of the compression-molding machine to become flush with an upper surface of the die table. The molded products are then caught by a guide member positioned to confront the upper surface of the die table, are guided to a gutter chute slanted downward, and fall along the gutter chute to be delivered to the device or the equipment configured to execute the post process. A device or an equipment configured to execute certain processing and another device or equipment configured to execute subsequent processing are ordinarily connected via a gutter chute for delivery of the molded products.
Such a technique obviously causes gradual decrease in height of the molded products and requires disposition of a lift configured to halfway lift upward the molded products. Furthermore, when the molded products drop onto the chute, the molded products may hit an inner wall or a bottom wall of the chute or may collide with each other to be damaged (e.g., broken, chipped, or abraded). In particular, molded products having less hardness such as orally disintegrating tablets (OD tablets that disintegrate by saliva or a small amount of water in an oral cavity) or chewable tablets (that are crunched in an oral cavity) are seriously damaged by dropping.
Furthermore, the molded products become not aligned in the order of molding by the compression-molding machine while being transported via the chute. Upon tableting failure such as sticking of the powdery material kept adhering to a specific one of the die bores or the punches of the compression-molding machine to cause a chipped molded product or mold trouble such as chipping at a tip of one of the punches, a normal molded product and a defective molded product are mixed to be indistinguishable from each other. A large number of molded products are thus entirely required to be discarded in this case.